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Denmark charges imam with incitement for sermon that called for killing Jews

July 24, 2018

Copenhagen’s main synagogue, where a guard was shot and killed early Feb. 15, 2015. (Wikimedia Commons)

(JTA) – An imam in Denmark has been charged with incitement for calling in a sermon for the killing of Jews, marking the first time that charges have been issued under a new hate speech law on religious preaching.

In March, Mundhir Abdallah of the Masjid Al-Faruq mosque in Copenhagen cited a call in the Koran to “fight the Jews and kill them.” In May, the local Jewish community filed a complaint with police about the speech.

Abdallah was charged Tuesday in Copenhagen District Court, the AFP news service reported. The hate speech law was passed last year.

“These are serious statements and I think it’s right for the court to now have an opportunity to assess the case,” public prosecutor Eva Ronne said in a statement, according to AFP.

The man who killed a Jewish volunteer security guard in a shooting attack during a bat mitzvah celebration at a synagogue in Copenhagen in February 2015, Omar El-Hussein, reportedly attended the mosque where Abdallah preached the day before the shooting.